faderift | RIFTER ARRIVAL: Guardian 9:45

I. ARRIVAL

You were asleep—whether deeply or fitfully, falling unconscious for the last time in a pool of blood or just resting your eyes for a moment—and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

In this world, bathed in the light of a flare of too-bright green light, you plunge through cold darkness until you hit stone—maybe flat, maybe angled into steps. You may be bruised or scratched from the fall, but you're alive, and you're fine except for the narrow splinter of light that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Above you, hanging suspended in the air, is a shifting, crystalline tear in reality. It's the same color as the mark on your hand.

Beyond the rift, the sky is so dark that it might take time to realize that some of it isn't sky at all, but the ceiling of a cavern that's crumbled open at the top, with clear starlight showing beyond. A narrow waterfall cascades down from above, past the stone platform you've found yourself on and into a pool somewhere below it, invisible in the dark. The space around you, illuminated green by the rift's light, is one of several streets built into the walls and lined with ancient and apparently-abandoned stone homes--remnants of an abandoned dwarven thaig, as you may learn from natives or those who've been here before.

Because you aren't alone here. There are other people around you—humans, or at least humanoid—with matching green marks, and an assortment of junk that might be familiar or might be very much not, scattered across the stone.

And beneath the rift, stretching their shoulders and loosing roars, are two monstrous purple-gray giants, wielding electricity and flanked by a half-dozen ghostly beings flinging fire and ice. The street is narrow, and judging by the sound of the waterfall hitting the pool below, going over the side would end poorly for anyone's bones.

Fortunately, you won't have to fight them alone. On the outskirts of the rift's reach but moving in rapidly, there are other people already waiting, armed and armored, to intervene on your behalf or to toss you a weapon of you own. Many are wearing a symbol that looks a bit like a hairy eyeball being pierced through by a sword, and at least a couple of them seem to know what they're doing. They've been waiting for you.

II. RECOVERY

Once the rift is sealed and the last of the demons dispatched, there's time to breathe, to collect the goods scattered across the stone, and to retreat to the Inquisition's camp. It's too late to travel, so your first night in Thedas will be spent here, in this long-abandoned thaig. There's campfire food, spare clothing, and extra bedrolls for the new arrivals set up inside tents and the least pest-infested abandoned houses. And in the morning, there's a long ride—wagon or horseback, your choice—south to Kirkwall.

III. KIRKWALL

Kirkwall sits perched on, below, and within the black cliffs surrounding a harbor. The Gallows sit in the center of that harbor, on a rocky island occupied almost entirely by a massive fortress. Despite everyone's best efforts at removing statues of slaves and depressing murals, planting more greenery in the stone courtyards and gardens, and removing unnecessary bars, it still has the lingering aura of a prison, or a place where something terrible has happened, or both.

Still, it's home for at least the next few weeks. New rifters are quarantined in the Gallows on arrival, to an extent. They're given rooms with everyone else and permitted to wander the grounds freely, but not to leave the island fortress to explore the city. It's for their own safety—there are social mores they can't understand yet, people who would like to kidnap or kill them who they must learn to be wary of, writing that may or may not be unfamiliar and a thousand places to get lost—as well as everyone else's, but as long as no one exhibits any signs of contagious disease or a propensity for murdering civilians, it will only be temporary.

In the meantime, they'll be gathered together or taken aside frequently for talks on a number of issues considered vital to their success, or at least their basic survival, from a quick overview of Thedosian geography, to an explanation of the war that the Inquisition fighting, to a breakdown of the local currency.

There is also a seemingly endless list of don'ts. Don't touch red lyrium. Don't touch lyrium at all. Don't approach darkspawn unprepared. Don't put anything covered with odd black film anywhere near your orifices. Don't deal with demons. Don't use magic in the streets unless absolutely necessary, or else the locals might panic. Don't mouth off to nobles. Don't wander too far for too long, if you insist on wandering at all, or the anchor in your hand will become unbearable. Don't forget that you're guests, frightening ones, and making a good impression now may make all the difference in the future, when the war is over and someone has to decide what to do with this collection of Fade-touched strangers.

And don't forget, when you are allowed to leave, that the last boat back to the Gallows is at midnight.

((single thread only please, threadjacking welcome! please help wrangle this yahoo.))

Fundamentally speaking, this is not how this is supposed to go. And believe him, he knows a thing or two about dismissals. Usually, they come with this fantastic sense of being unmade - of shedding physicality and bursting into a riot of shape and color as his Essence leaps for the delightfully unformed reality of The Other Place. You know the sensation of belonging somewhere and going back to it after what feels like an age spent away? It's like that. It feels that way every time, even if he's only been away for as long as it took to tell some girl she was misinformed and her ideas stupid.

Falling out of a hole in the sky, bouncing down a flight of stone stairs and coming to rest with a bruising thump doesn't feel anything like that. Call him naturally intuitive, but before Bartimaeus has even opened his eyes, he's gotten the impression something has gone terribly wrong.

Opening them confirms it.

Because there is something attached to him. The realization is revolting enough all on its own, the sickly green slash in his hand pulsing and prickling. The pain is immediate and cutting, devouring in slow motion. That, he thinks instantly, is trouble. And then he realizes he's looking at his own hand. It has five fingers. The nails are reasonable lengths. The knuckles look like a person's might, which is entirely wrong because if he's getting yanked back into the physical world after all of this, he definitely would have landed in a better guise than Stick Limbed Boy #436. Sure, that isn't usually a ton of time to make these decisions between the Other Place and the summoning pentacle, but all it takes to prepare a dramatic entrance is a few seconds. He has practice, you know.

And finally, speaking of pentacles - he isn't inside of one. Which, as irritating as they are, might actually be as trouble as the fingers thing if he thought about it long enough. Luckily, he doesn't have to.

Because the minute he rolls over and the world goes from being upside down to right side up, Bartimaeus spots two things: first, there's the horrible twisted shape of a spirit on the offensive. It's all razor sharp points and massive, contorted musculature. Honestly, if he squints the creature reminds him a little of that Ascobol. But secondly - and this is really the one that gets him moving -, there's a person with a sword. They stab the spirit. It makes a horrible noise.

"No thank you," Bartimaeus thinks (or says), and then the boy crumpled at the bottom of the stairs with a rift shard in his hand is suddenly no more. In his place is a dark colored lion with a rancid green glow eating up one of its paws. It seems momentarily shocked. Then it begins to roll over and right itself.

So.

One thing leads to another and the next thing anyone knows, there's a dark haired boy in his indeterminately late teens being strong-armed through the Gallows courtyard. "You really should rethink all this," he is heard cheerfully protesting. "You don't seem to know any of this, but I'm something of a celebrity where I come from. When I say I raised the walls of Uruk and fought at the Battle of Qadesh, you're meant to 'ooh' and 'aah.' I can guarantee you'll regret this-- sorry, what did you say your name was? Oh right. You'll regret this, Humphrey. You'll rue the day you put Bartimaeus of-- hey!"

And then he is gone, having been shoved down the ominous passageway leading down into the depths of the Gallows dungeons.

Which look, these things happen. Do it usually require significantly more in the way of painful magical encouragement to get him moving in the right direction? Sure. But he's tired and this thing in his hand isn't making anything easy. Making good on threats is a goal best saved for the future once he's figured out how to avoid having his Essence eaten alive by this tear in his hand.

Which is probably why hours (or days) later, the young man who allegedly took on a half dozen shapes when he'd first arrived through the rift is both still in the cell he'd been shoved in and wearing more or less the same shape he'd been in while being crab walked through the Gallows. He can be found there in the Gallow's dungeon lying on his side with his cheek propped in his hand while he pretends to sleep. --Or maybe he's loitering near the thick cell door with his face pressed near the narrow slot. "Hello there, sailor. Help a friend out?" --Or maybe he actually is sleeping, which is maybe the most mortifying thing anyone's ever caught him doing.

Edited 2019-02-11 16:08 (UTC)

He doesn't come to a lot of Rift openings - they've plenty of healers, he's not some muscle-bound sword-wielder who stupidly likes hunting demons when there are perfectly good ones to fight closer to Kirkwall - but now his luck has run out as it always does and it's his turn.

At least hanging out with Hawke and Cousland gave him a fair bit of experience in dodging said demons and said muscle-bound pointy things addicts. Which he does, proud of his agility at his age, to reach one of the new Rifter arrivals.

"Hello, welcome. Let's walk away fro-no." 'No' might not be the best reaction to seeing someone transform into a lion, but he feels it reasonable enough. Sure, he's seen a woman turn into a dragon in front of him before. That doesn't change his instinctual worry about being eaten.

"Nicely done, shapeshifting is impressive, can we maybe get away from the demons? Let the people who are good at fighting them have a go this time. There will be plenty of others to kill, and I'm not convinced lion is the best form for it." Too close range, not enough armor or shielding or other people wearing armor and shielding in between demon and you, in his opinion.

'No' is right. Bartimaeus has rolled over on the bottom of the stairs and gone to stand, only to find his legs unpleasantly weak. All over, there's a bizarre heady sensation of something being not right. It takes him a moment of confused fumbling - stop talking, you, can't you see he's trying to concentrate? - before he realizes what's happening. It's a bit like patting every pocket for lost keys, only here he's stock of himself and realizing with a mute horror that there is less of him than their was just a moment ago when he'd been that boy crumpled at the bottom of the stairwell.

"What?" says the lion, baffled and irritated. It looks at Anders. The lion is all razor sharp teeth even as it reels like a punch drunk boxer. "I'm a djinni, you--"

There's probably a swear word in there, but it's swallowed by the bang of a nearby magical discharge. In the immediate aftermath, the lion lunges.

Colin heard something about a captured apostate and his feet did the rest. Actually his feet did more than they should have--he was halfway to the dungeon before he remembered to turn back to the apothecary for herbs and a hornazo. He thunders down the stairs and takes long strides between the cells, looking in each. But Bartimaeus spots him first.

He arrives at the cell door with a grim look. The light isn't great here, so he can't really check the state of the prisoner, but he'll err on the side of caution. Mages tend to get locked up for things ordinary folk do every day. So far he hasn't heard of anyone being made Tranquil, but it could always happen.

Without comment, he slides the hornazo between the bars of the narrow slot. It is crusty and warm, the fresh lunch item of the day that Colin usually charges five silver for.

"Are you all right?" he asks softly.

He'll give this place credit for one thing and one thing only - he isn't used to much of anyone falling for the bait he dangles from a very obvious hook, but so far the odds have been surprisingly good here. Falling into a physical plane and finding all the rules having changed usually isn't this good for him.

Hook, line, and sinker, he thinks as he receives the hornazo through the slot in the door. "Oh, how kind," he whimpers accordingly with the air of a limping puppy. "I'd be much better if I could get out and stretch my legs. Get a little sun. The air is so stale down here."

Out of view of the slot, Bartimaeus hocks the fresh lunch to one side. Won't be needing that, thank you. Instead, he shifts around just slightly in an effort for the light to catch his big, pathetic, teary eyes better.

A grim look. There's not actually much he can do without getting hung to dry by Beleth, even if this guy is completely innocent. Which isn't immediately clear.

"Believe me," Colin says. "Better for us both if you sit tight. They won't keep you in there forever. You're not hurt, are you?"

There's a criminal in the dungeon, someone who came from a rift and is claiming he did nothing wrong. Which, perhaps, he didn't.
Benedict isn't brave enough yet to venture out to the rifts-- let alone to be open about his own shard-- but he does want to have a look-see at this new arrival with his attitude and his suspicious name. Dressed in his dignified chamberlain's duds, he braves entering the dungeon (Maker, the smell of it, the memory of the smell, fills him with nausea) and his fancy leather shoes click toward the cell.

"...well you're just a person," comes the vaguely disappointed greeting.

Here's a troubling thing: in the most real sense, Bartimaeus isn't completely sure of the answer. The shard in his hand aches, and while it might not be actively gnawing at his Essence just this moment, the memory of it shredding into him with the least provocation is... Well. It might not be a hurt in the way this gormless young man before him means, but it isn't exactly pleasant either.

Setting aside the uneasiness of that reality though, he knows an opportunity when he sees one.

"I am. Just a little," says the prisoner gingerly, all shrouded in the cell's shadow. "One of those spirits gave me a good swipe when I first arrived. I was given some bandages, but-- well, I don't suppose you could fetch a healer, could you? I worry about the cuts going all moldy down here."

This just a person is currently reclining near the rear of the cell with his back to the door, using a small chip of stone to carve lewd drawings into the base of the wall¹. This person has in fact been steadfastly ignoring anyone and everyone at his door in recent memory (what a nest of gossip mongers this place is!), but that kind of insult simply can't be left unchallenged.

Bartimaeus rolls over, his expression the definition of appalled.

"Excuse me?"

1. He's not the first one, either. There was a real artist is here at some point in the last 30 years.

Going all moldy down here. It can happen. It's possible. It won't.

"I am a healer," Colin says gently, "and I don't have a key. Here." A pouch slides through the slot as well. "Pack the wound with that. It's strongly recommended to moisten them first with crocodile tears."

If Bartimaeus looks again, Colin is giving him a tight smile.

"I thought you'd be a lion, or something interesting," comes Bene's reply, not seeming at all bothered by Bartimaeus' response. "Unless you've shapeshifted into that peasant shopkeeper. What do you really look like?" He touches a finger to his chin, considering.

So much for that idea. Time to try a different angle.

"What?" He must surely be gravely wounded for how hurt he sounds. "Such a cruel thing to say. Why, you hardly know me at all! Here I was thinking you might be a kindred spirit, but if you've only come all this way to mock me then I'll have nothing to do with you. Go back to whoever sent you and tell them I've refused to be handled so unfairly. If they're going to torture me like this, the least they could do is be honest about it."

The packet of herbs gets shoved back through the slot. "Here. I don't want it."

The herbs fall to the floor outside the cell. Colin doesn't look down at them. After a second, he picks up a nearby light and angles it so he can get a glimpse of Bartimaeus' face. It clatters to the floor and snuffs out.

"And you're a demon," he says with a manically pleasant edge. "That's. Good. I heard you were some apostate but, um."

'Um' seems to be the entire sentence there. It translates to weeeeeeird. He steps back as if ready to leave, then forward again as if he has a question he thought of but isn't quite ready to ask.

Edited 2019-02-11 21:38 (UTC)

He gathers the sensible reply in this circumstance would be something along the lines of 'I don't have any idea what you're talking about,' or maybe 'Who? Me? A lion? That sounds like a stretch, sir.'

What he says instead is: "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Bartimaeus throws the rock at the door for good measure.

He'd already started to make a few subtle alterations to his guise - a little longer in the nose here, a little sharper in the face there, and so on - in the hopes that old Sense Of Humor here would find a way to slip inside. It would have been a simple matter of knocking him over and taking his place and closing the door behind him then. Usually he wouldn't have had to prepare like this at all; usually he could have made the change between one step and the next. But here, it takes some preparation. Some attention. Some time.

Which is why when that light lifts up to illuminate his face, he most closely resembles a slightly mushy copy of the young man standing in the corridor.

Bah. It was a good idea at the time.

"That's rude, you know," says Lopsided Colin. His hand in the slot has strangely long fingers and his eyes are very, very dark¹. "You shouldn't call people names."

1. So he's not getting the door opened, that much is painfully obvious. Might as well have a little fun with it.

"Maybe." Flinching out of the way as the rock hits the door, Benedict wrinkles his nose at it.

"You know," he says, allowing the subject to drop for the moment, "the guards here aren't known for their kindness. Especially if you throw rocks at them." Though it could be taken for a threat, he sounds too matter-of-fact, even cautionary. "You'll be kept here until they've gotten what they want from you."

Edited 2019-02-11 22:34 (UTC)

"Good," the boy says, still laid out on the cold stone of the cell floor. He props his cheek against his knuckles. "When I escape, they won't think to look for me until it's too late."

And he will absolutely will be getting out of here. He just needs a little time to recover from everything that had happened at the Rift, to sort out exactly how much he had do and how often without the shard pulsing in his hand threatening to eat him alive. Give him a few more hours, and he'll almost certainly have that door there blown off its hinges with a finely honed Detonation. Then who'll be laughing?

(Definitely not Hubert. That's a threat he intends to make good on out of principle.)

"Now unless you're planning to put on a show for my entertainment, kindly run along. I'm a little busy right now." He hikes a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the wall. "These bits don't draw themselves, you know."

"When." Benedict almost smirks, but he's too chilled by the statement: he tried to escape, once or twice. A wave of nausea passes over him once again, and he holds onto the bars, letting it pass.
"No," he agrees, when the prisoner indicates the drawings, "and the rest of it didn't, either."

A pause. The boy's posture doesn't shift whatsoever - his cheek is still set idly on his knuckles, his other hand splayed idly at his side in the aftermath of gesturing to the wall. But where a moment ago, his attention was absolutely wandering, it's now pointed directly at that little slot in the door and the vague arrangement of a person he can spy beyond it.

Well, isn't that interesting?

"Really now? The dungeon as a popular past time? You people have the strangest hobbies."

Edited 2019-02-12 00:12 (UTC)

"You're not the first to be unjustly shut away in there," comes Benedict's voice, but he pulls away from the window, sensing eyes on him and realizing how much he doesn't want to be looked at. "I... caution you against pushing your luck. The window is a luxury they don't have to afford you."

Why did he come down here? Now he isn't sure-- he thought it was to gawk at the strange new Rifter, but maybe, there's the slightest chance... maybe it was to stop the wheel of history from turning all the way around again.

"Watch out for the Templars," he says, leaning with his back to the door to watch the hall, and lowering his voice, which has gone from smug and smarmy to bone-weary. "Do what they say. There'll be no quarter from them, and... your chances are better above ground."

I. Arrival

Oh. This again?

He felt the rush of deja-vu as consciousness flowed back into his mind, like the lazy lap of waves on a summer shore. It was all so very familiar - he'd arrived in a cave last time too, hadn't he?

He cracked open his eyes, and it was, indeed, a cave, though not the one he'd first arrived in. Or at least not the same part - he didn't remember there being any structures inside last time.

He gradually got to his feet - a difficult task when every nerve felt like it was on fire - especially in the palm of his hand. But something felt ...wrong. The dim gloom of the cave, the sickly green glare from the rift...

...Something was missing - he was forgetting something.

It was the crackling of electricity that alerted him to the pride demon behind him before his sense sluggishly caught up. Instinctively his hand reached out as though to stop the attack, though no sort of magic barrier seemed to be erected.

Seemed being the operative word.

The electricity crashed on the unseen barrier like waves on a rocky shore - the force of it so great that the push back caused the skin of the Medicine Seller's palm to split.

He scoured the area around him - there would be others, and indeed there were, in varying states of consciousness. And... yes, he recognized the symbol - the Inquisition was here too.

How fortunate.

"Try to rouse the others. Should they fall off the side, it will be their end," he said calmly to the nearest person, as though he were remarking mildly on the weather. Folded bits of paper appeared between his fingers as he surveyed the area around the rift. Two pride demons, and at least six wraiths - on his own he could buy a few minutes with the barrier, even reinforced with his ofuda.

"...This might be troublesome."

II. Recovery

a. After the Battle

b. The Thaig

c. On the Road Again

It's exactly the kind of exhaustion he'd usually ignore, for the record. What does he care about anyone's feelings, or how tired they are with their own would-be suffering? Not a scrap, thank you. What good would it do him to show any interest? None whatsoever. But usually he isn't dragging around a magic tear like a millstone around the neck, and usually his Essence is as light as air whereas now it feels like slowly solidifying concrete.

So look, maybe he has a few perfectly valid reasons for wanting to hear the kid out. They're all practically self-motivated though. Maybe he'll say something that's actually useful

"So what is it is they say you did that you didn't do, hm?" He's moved his spare hand from his side and is drumming his fingers on the cell floor now.

RIFTER ARRIVAL: Guardian 9:45

ARRIVAL & RECOVERY

KIRKWALL

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